


And Now You Do

by leafchron



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A look into the past, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Established Relationship, John Watson you keep me right, Lots of Sap, M/M, No Idea, Or not, POV Second Person, Post S3 predictions, Post-Canon, Post-Reflections, Sherlock is, So no reference to S4, Weddings, hopefully maybe, just be happy plskthx, or maybe just post S3 wish fulfilment, sap, written post S3 and pre TAB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9288314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafchron/pseuds/leafchron
Summary: Once upon a time, you did not have these small, tiny, things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I wrote this a long time ago, after S3 and before TAB, when I was reeling in the wake of the HLV ending. And now S4 is here, and maybe rendering all of it non-canonical after its run - I'm just going to leave this here now.

When you look back on those days, sometimes the urge to delete them is like an itch burrowing under your skin.

But you do not, because they are about the blogger, and as he chronicles cases of your life together, you keep an exhaustive record of every detail about him, and you are beginning to understand, as his blog entries are selective, your records will never be complete..

(You do not wish to admit it is because _they are about John_ , and at a certain indeterminable time frame that has become the predominate criteria for retaining any memories, or the lack of subsequent removal of. In addition when you tried deleting memories of John a physical ache manifested in your body that served as effective deterrence to the continuation of, or any future attempts to engage in such activity. It makes no sense because the memories themselves caused much emotional pain, and yet attempts to eradicate them caused equal amounts of pain. Not to mention past memories should have no bearing on present physical conditions, it is almost _psychosomatic_ , how maddening, and as you have dismissed John’s leg so many ages ago, you can only imagine his smirk. It makes no sense at all. You leave the memories alone. After all, there are many other things you can delete for which you have no use. John will supply you if there is a need. He is the repository of random useless information you can always rely on.)

 _James Bond is not random useless information,_ he mock-railed at you once.

You shrug. _You can always tell me again, you tell him. I do not possess all the information in the world. You know things I do not. And as long as you are here, as the secondary bearer of information, I will have your information too as long as I have you. I trust you to be a part of my hard drive. Isn’t that enough?_

He looks at you, you don’t understand his look, because it is composite of too many different concurrent emotions, and some of them are directly contrasting (how can it be it still doesn’t make sense) You do understand, over time, that things that make John look like that at you (not always the same look, sometimes the composite of emotions differs, but the general theme of too many emotions, some directly contrasting each other endures) is generally a Rather Good Thing (as long as there is an element of touched in whatever blend of emotions John is experiencing, as well as something you loathe to call ‘love’ for how imprecise and nebulous and mawkish the descriptor is, but John concurs heartily and insistently and for the lack of a better word you acquiesce, and your acquiescence makes John break out that smile that makes his eyes disappear and it is illogical and quite possibly mad how much you enjoy making John’s eyes disappear).

Gloriously mad.

And things that John considers Rather Good Things are good, especially for you, because it has an 87% probability of driving John to Outward Displays of Affection (not Public, because John is still reticent about physical expressions of affect) that will involve, by magnitude of possibility of occurrence, your 1) lips, 2) hair, 3) hands, 4) neck, 5) chest. If the conditions are ideal, at about 14% of the time, entailing:

-Thing you said or did is Rather Very Good according to John’s occasionally inscrutable criteria -John is in an excellent emotional mood

-You are both currently physically situated in the flat

-Neither of you has a pressing upcoming engagement

-The weather is fine (direct positive causal relation on the improvement of John’s mood though he is blatantly unaware of it)

-You are wearing the purple shirt/you are wearing nothing but the bedsheet

Then John will be driven to Sexual Displays of Affection. And because John is very good at that, it is all very good for you.

But things have not always been Generally Good, on top of occasionally exciting, in the past. They had been Only Sometimes Good, or exciting but Not Good, or Not Good and boring.

Or they had been, to wholly borrow John’s words, _‘a clusterfuck of epic levels of fucked-up-ness I don’t know how we managed to unfuck ourselves’_ and there’s just something about John swearing like a sailor with a straight face and matter of fact tone that makes you think about girls liking a soldier, and sometimes men, too.

(John knows you like soldiers. It is no secret now. When he manipulates you with that and you let him manipulate you with that it is too hard to keep track of who comes up on top and who actually wins. John snorts at you and says even if he tops you’re topping from the bottom and also that it’s a win-win situation, it’s not a zero-sum game. As long as someone’s cock is in someone’s arse you both win. John is sometimes incredibly insightful like that.)

 

The clusterfuck.

 

Otherwise known as John’s Wedding.

 

Otherwise known as John’s Biggest Mistake.

 

Otherwise known in John’s own words as _Fuck, Fuck, I Mean, Fuck. Right. Fuck It._

 

(John getting sweary is like you speaking French, he muses one time you were having sex.

 _What does that even mean_ , you question him.

He gets that glint in his eyes when he says, _like when I order you to get on your knees, recruit, and your only reply should be Yes Sir or Yes Captain_.

Ah, you think, that’s illuminating.)

John says the clusterfuck is you committing suicide in front of him and also you getting shot and actually dying and then killing someone in cold blood and he thought you were going to get shot again and that he wins in getting clusterfucked because nothing is worse than seeing someone you love dying and you died too many times and you ignore him. But more on that later. You tell him you getting shot and then killing someone were as a result of John’s Wedding, and when you tell him that he looks like that time you wanted to try a new position in bed and accidentally kneed him in the balls and also like he wants to punch you, but in the end he retorts that he only got married because you killed yourself and left him so it’s back to you again. You then argue you only killed yourself and left because you were trying to protect him and he says you made him think you were dead so it’s still your fault he got married and got you shot.

(And really you know it was all because of Moriarty and you wanting to play, bouncing around him like a _puppy_ with a stick in your mouth and practically begging him to throw the stick so you could catch it and bring it back to him to lay it at his feet, so you were culpable for the two of you being dragged into the whole clusterfuck and everything else was just dominoes falling down in place, and this knowledge fills you with a sensation akin to someone pouring molten metal down your throat (you’ve had someone press hot-red metal to your skin so you have an approximate idea what that entails) so you keep your mouth shut after that.

John presses his lips together before he says, softly, _I didn’t mean it that way, I don’t blame you for that, so stop blaming yourself.  I thought we were just taking the piss out of each other_ , and he puts his hand on your shoulder, changes his mind and forcefully drags you into a hug even though you don’t want to be comforted but he is forceful and if he wants to comfort you will end up comforted anyway. He also calls you love and you will never, over your dead body, admit how much you like that. But apparently proof of your dead body doesn’t mean very much as usual, because he knows, somehow, that you are not averse to it (Is it your face? Your body? Your control over the bodily must be deteriorating. You long to ask him for the tell-tale signs but you don’t because you don’t like it, remember) and keeps calling you that again and again when the two of you are alone. (It slipped out a couple of times when the two of you were not alone and he didn’t realise and one memorable time in front of Lestrade, where Lestrade’s eyebrows fly to the top of his head before he smirks at you knowingly and you pretend not to see him and thank god John didn’t realise or saw it.) He hugs you and calls you love and even strokes your hair and just like that the molten metal drains out of your body through every point of contact John is touching you. Such is the state of your life, now.)

So now that you see it for what it is and what you were, you burn in yearning to delete John’s Wedding. The foolish napkin opera houses, fabric houses no better than wood or stick houses, brought down by one gust of strong wind. Lilac bridesmaid dresses as if lilac didn’t symbolise first love. The best man speech that Molly and Lestrade and Mrs Hudson had subsequently informed you was ‘ _literally a love letter to the groom, oh you were so sweet in your speech, yes you were, but do you understand what a love letter is_ ’ and how would you have known, having no experience in either weddings or recognising you were in love. That word again. That vows were between the couple and rightfully none of the best man’s business. And belatedly realising the groom subtlety groping his best man’s ass while said best man was trying to tutor him his own wedding waltz, or the groom making a drunken pass at his best man on his stag night, were all things that were Not All Right.

These things you are dying to delete, so sentimental and maudlin you want to scrub your mind sparkling clean of them, but just once, only once, you will stare at them in the eye unflinchingly, you will present them as the facts they are, and never again, you will not repeat yourself.

-You said and meant it, that John was the best man you have known (better than even Billy Kincaid)

-You deduced you loved John in the middle of the speech

-You vowed to give your life to John (yes, fine, Mary too, once upon a time, but that was when Mary was John’s and she was merely automatically included by default <as you were, are, John’s>. And now as Mary is no longer John’s, she can be removed from the equation with ease and haste and relief.)

-You looked John in the eye and you knew you loved him

-He looked at you and you knew he knew you loved him

-You left the wedding early (Damn Mrs Hudson!)

-You played Cluedo with Mrs Hudson when John went on his sex holiday

-You took cocaine after John left

-You moved his chair away

 

Enough. That’s too many _love_ in one paragraph.

Right then. So you crave fervently to delete all of it, but you won’t. Because John’s eyes soften visibly around the edges when you tell him the facts as factually as you can, and at the end of it he only says, _I will hold you to all of it._

You only scoff at him.

He smirks at you in return, in that truly scary way and assures you he remembers the best man speech and the vow, and he will reproduce it and plaster your living room wall with copies of your speech. And if he can’t remember it word for word he will replace your sentiments with his own words then. And he will blow it up, poster size, so every single future client will get to read it the minute they enter your living room. Then he smiles at you again.

You make a mental note to not tell him such things in the future.

(You might as well not prevaricate to yourself here. These days, with the state of things as they exist, the occurrence of this is laughable.)

 

* * *

 

You will move on to being shot and dying and the first time you killed someone in cold blood.

You do not intend to tell him, he was not expecting this, but he inebriated you and loosened your tongue and he was trying to induce you to spill about some minor issue you’d since deleted, but what he ended up with was hearing that your heart had stopped and you were tempted, for a few moments, to just lie there in your mind and give up and it would’ve be so easy, just letting go of it all. Instead of what you eventually did, which was to claw your way back to life, because you had promised John after all to keep him safe, and a promise is a promise. And to his further questioning of course you shot Magnussen for him, who else would it be, Mary? And you start giggling at the idea of it. Ludicrous. It was your Christmas present to him, to keep him safe, and Mary safe, for him. Even if killing a man was so hard, it was one of the hardest thing you had to do.

At this point you look over and had to squint for a while because…was he crying? That didn’t make sense. He didn’t even cry at your funeral or at your grave, you were present and extremely certain. He should be happy because you had given him to understand that you came back to life for him and protected him and shouldn’t that elicit happy emotions as you were given to understand? So you tell him as much, only to have him cry harder and that really perturbed you even in your state of extreme inebriation, so you lean forward from your chair and try to pat his shoulder and your arm wouldn’t stop swaying.

Then you tip all the way forward and fall asleep with your forehead on his other shoulder.

What you would really like to delete was how it felt when the bullet entered you and you felt like you were dying and the knowledge that you were dying filled every nook of your brain. How the pain was relentless and unremitting and striped you down until there were no aspects of you but pain, nothing but pain and terror, almost wiping your mind down, your mind dying. And then the horror in the realisation that John was in danger, grave danger and you couldn’t keep him safe. The agonising decision in those seconds, that you would give up your life for John Watson. That maybe you would be shot again. It was not hard to make the decision, and once made you had no regrets and did not look back, nor would you have it any other way. But to pull the trigger and take a life in cold blood, even a life as disgusting and hated as Magnussen, even for John, it felt like your soul was ripped in half, like some part of you did die, and you thought, this was what he did for me, even as something primal was screaming deep in you, spitting blood. And you could only think of John, John, John, to keep your mind from splintering away. This is what you would like to delete, as well. How it feels to take a life, with your bare hands, in cold blood, point blank. How it made you wish you were truly a sociopath. Then maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much.

The next morning you wake up in your bed, dehydrated and hypersensitive to external stimuli and dulled with the low throb of pain in your head. John is watching you, and you feel him clenching and unclenching his fist in hesitation, before he decides and brings his hand to your hair, and strokes your hair lightly. You puzzle over his actions before the conversation of the previous night slam into you. You feel the tension as solid as a rock between you and him and do not move a muscle. What do you do in moments like this? You would look to him for help but he is the cause and would be the effect of this situation. After a few tense moments he says, _I was just remembering after I shot the cabbie, you asked me if I was alright. You were worried about me._

_And I, I never asked you if you were alright._

_I just wanted to say, this is the best thing anyone’s, well I mean, you’ve, ever done for me._

_What I said before – you are the best man I’ve ever known._

_So, are you alright? You did kill a man._

You let him draw the tension away from you with every stroke of his hand, and you’ve never considered yourself someone who sought out the tactile aspects of human touch, but it seems he is uncovering crevices in you you never knew you possessed. You think, if you do a bad thing for a good person with good intentions for a good outcome, is it a bad thing overall? Does doing that make you a bad person? Is something good or bad because of what it is, or what is the outcome? If you only wanted to do a good thing for a good person, is it a good thing still if a person died at the end?

So you don’t delete any of it, because whether you are alright or not alright now, you would not have done it any other way. You would not have let John fall into the clutches of Magnussen, you must protect him, this is not the question in the equation, there was no other way to achieve a satisfying conclusion, and once that parameter was set, you did what you had to do. This is what you tell him too, and you know alcohol is a diuretic, so John should’ve been at least slightly dehydrated after the previous night’s drinking, you certainly are, so why is he tearing up again? So you tell him he should conserve his bodily fluids and stop crying, because it won’t help his dehydration. And he gives you a look and pushes you down, until your head is in his lap and his fingers are moving through your hair, like he is trying to comfort you, but it appears he is trying to comfort himself more, so you do not resist.

He sighs and tells you he doesn’t mind if you want to delete all of it, delete being shot and dying and taking a life, he says these are things he would be glad if you didn’t have to bear the weight of anymore.

You don’t delete them because it helps you remember this was what John did for you and what he had to live with as well and it helps you remember the depth of his sacrifice (:immeasurable) for you and that John can’t delete these things even if he wants to. Also because he said it was the best thing anyone’s ever done for him and even if you aren’t sure if it’s a good thing or not, you like it when he calls it the best thing and you suppose you should retain it. Even if you aren’t a very good thing yourself. When you try to argue your point he shoots back, _but you are good for me, you are the best thing in my life_ , and that shuts you up.

No, you keep all of it.

 

* * *

 

You want to delete the plane, even if you left for only 4 minutes and not one more, because there have moments in your life characterised by a severe scarcity of hope, there have been bleak periods you have culled ruthlessly. But there are few moments as close to this, in the complete absence of hope, and the full weight of a black hole that has sucked all light and everything that is good and interesting and delightful, and has filled your body with stones of hopelessness and helplessness and the utter void of anything to look forward to. It is not death per se you dread, it is how you are approaching the death, it is how this point in your life is devoid of meaning, and anything that mitigates the fact. That’s all you desired, an alleviating factor, and in that moment John approaches with his wife, his wife that has brought the two of you to this present juncture, and there is nothing to mitigate it. John is no longer yours, and you are not his.

Though if all that is left of your life is this perhaps death isn’t too sore a point to beleaguer over.

But if John will be alright you can at least take that away with you.

Heartache is a terrible term, the heart is just an organ, it makes no sense to arbitrarily link the heart to emotions, especially certain emotions. Certainly you can have a heart attack as a medical condition, but all other metaphors are irrational and fallacious. Breaking one’s heart, for example. The heart does not break. It only stops, at some point.

That is why nothing will convince you to use the term heartbroken.

You did delete the plane.

But it came back, again and again.

( _It’s okay,_ John murmurs to your skin, late at night, the quiet settling. Somehow, it is less hateful these days.

 _It serves no purpose,_ you mutter crossly back to him, _I want to remove it._

 _No,_ he hums in agreement, _no, but that’s life, love. Sometimes events seem to serve no purpose but leave an emotional fallout and yet you can’t remove them either._

 _I came back didn’t I_ , you tell him petulantly. _I don’t want this black hole around anymore._

 _Well,_ he says, in all his infinite wisdom, _I don’t know, it did make two things very clear to all parties involved._

You raise an eyebrow at him.

 _That I love you_ , he says seemingly lightly, like it is a light thing, _and that you love me._ )

 

* * *

 

Although you would like to delete Mary in summary and everything associated with the spectre (especially how your sentiment for John blinded you to what she was, that you will almost certainly never forgive yourself for), what you would really like is to delete her from John for John, because she caused him so much pain (you would also never forgive her, because she did the unforgivable in hurting John and nobody gets to do that. Though, you did do the unforgivable to him too. And he did forgive you. But you don’t forgive yourself, as easily) and you do in fact study him for a few days, wondering if there was some way you could apply it on him. When he cottons on to being your subject of study and bullies the reason for it out of you, he only sighs. _Never let me say again you don’t care, because when you care it’s actually scarier than when I thought you didn’t care._

 _Let me say this loud and clear,_ he says.

_You do not remove my memory. You do not alter my memory in any way, by any means. You do not attempt to or give me amnesia. Stay away from my memories you git._

You purse your lips.

 _What,_ he starts warily.

 _Too late?_ You offer _._

_Oh for the love of…god, you mean, what you said at my wedding…oh god, I thought you were joking, especially with Sholto and everything . Oh my god. Please tell me you were joking then. Oh the hell…_

You have spent enough time around John, to finally, finally learn his _shut up Sherlock this moment_ body language and to actually heed its warning.  (it’s not anything, but you two have spent too much time in Not Good that you’re not keen for you two to spend any more time there, and there’s just more to gain and also lose to keep John amicable these days, and never let it be said you couldn’t _count_.)

He turns to you again. _Alright, you insane berk, listen closely, from henceforth you are not allowed to touch or tamper with my memories in any way._

You nod. The truth is, you don’t want John to forget any part of you anymore than you want to delete him.

Although I do appreciate the sentiment, he finishes with a slight grin.

You frown at him. _What sentiment?_

He waves his hand around. _What would you call this then?_

_Practicality._

His grin grows exponentially. _Right. Then._

But you remember the dark days, not just for you, but for him. The baby that was not his. The wife that was not who she was and who caused so much destruction in her wake. So much damage. Him getting hurt. Him leaving, if only for a while.

Your fractured friendship, before it was forged anew, and eventually, developed an entire other dimension.

He was in so much pain, at least partly your fault, and you could not do anything to help, you  killed yourself you killed man, then many others, but it still wasn’t enough, for him. Nothing you could do for him. You could only sit there and watch him suffer and be there whether he wanted you or not and there was nothing else to do.

Eventually though, when you’ve sat there for long enough, slowly, over time, it became enough.

You ask him one night (always easier to make onerous enquiries in the dark where one can’t be seen), tentatively, if he wouldn’t wish to have Mary erased from his mind, in a figurative way, not literal, he’s expounded his opinions on the literal option. What you don’t ever ask, because you are fully cognizant of the wisdom not asking questions you don’t want the answers to, is if he would have preferred to erase all of you from his mind, delete you from manifesting in his life.

He is silent for a long time, then he sighs.

_You can’t do things that way, love. It just doesn’t work that way.  You can’t just throw away the bad, you’ll lose the good too. Because if there were no bad, the good wouldn’t be good either. They all make up part of you. You can’t just throw away pieces of your life like that._

Sometimes you think John knows a bit of the mind-reading he claims you do on him, because at that point he suddenly props himself up on his elbow, as though he has heard your unvoiced question, looks at you until you can’t avert your eyes, and clutches at your wrist like iron.

_Listen to me, listen carefully, I would never erase you. I would never regret meeting you. I would_

_never want a version where I didn’t meet you. I know things were really rough, and things between us were…for a while. But we got over it. We got better. Better than before. We became good, hell, fucking good, is what we are._

_Know this and never forget or doubt this: you were, are, and will always be, the best thing that happened to me._

You are wrong. John’s grip is not iron, because you can easily pick locks and handcuffs. This thread he winds around you, forged of his loyalty and love and commitment and friendship and

companionship and compatibility and acceptance and attraction, that he does not even know he has wound around you, is more unbreakable than any metal he could ever slap on you. He has you in his palm, and he does not know it.

What is stranger is you see it and you have no desire, none whatsoever, to pick yourself out of it.

 

* * *

 

You were not being precise when you spoke of John’s Wedding earlier. There are actually two of them. The first was the clusterfuck John speaks of in almost reverent tones, which he can, now.

After that clusterfuck you had promised to take photos of any attempted murders at John’s future weddings (he had insisted there would be no more, ha!), but sadly there are no attempted murders the second time, no dead bodies, not even any hint of a crime. Also John says you are forbidden to turn his wedding into a crime scene again, much less take any photos of any anticipated crimes. You protest that you didn’t cause crime to happen at his first wedding, it was already underway and you merely deduced it and solved it and did he prefer to not have prevented it, you demand. He shoots back unreasonably that he didn’t care. Crime follows you like moths to a light, he mutters darkly at you and you sniff at the unfairness of it all.

 _You like crimes, John,_ you cry out at him. _It’s what stopped you from killing yourself, it’s what gets your blood pumping, it’s what got us together, it’s what gets you turned on so much of the time, it’s what provides you with the danger you thrive on._

 _Not at my wedding!_ he rants in return, throwing his hands up, _Plus you make me sound like a criminal!_

John is such a drama queen.

He informs you you had better ensure no crimes were to occur at his wedding again, or god help him, he would actually commit a crime himself, this time, and you’re the genius, deduce the victim.

He allows you to plan his wedding for him again, though. And he doesn’t stop you at all, just watches everything you did with soft eyes, lets you dictate all his wedding decisions, even when you made him try twenty pieces of cake. This time you also vet the best man’s speech because you know what pitfalls to avoid now. And you plan John’s stag night. He says you were quite good at it, actually, so he’s giving you another chance. He lets you fold all the napkins you wanted. And he acquiesces to you interrogating all the staff associated with his wedding this time around, because that was how the attempted murderer got in at John’s first wedding. He draws the line at having you interrogate all his guests, but you did it anyway. You didn’t do a thorough enough check at John’s first wedding and that was how people of dubious characters got in. When he finds out he only sighs and says thank god it was going to be his last wedding, and he would never do another wedding again in his life. And then he smiles at you and says, this is going to be my last wedding. I promise. You tell him it’s good he had his first then, to practice on. He nods at you and tells you he’s learnt many things from his first wedding, like not to marry sociopathic killers with dubious origins, and to marry the right one, the one that he clicks with and loves, even if he does feel like killing that person on some days, and not just likes a lot or was around conveniently. You compose a new piece for him again, you teach him the waltz again because he’s forgotten how to in the intervening years (and let him grope you in the process). You tell him you hope he will be very happy with whom he’s marrying this time, and you truly congratulate him on his choice of companion, this time. You tell him he’s still the best man you’ve ever known, that will never change.

No matter what any of the wedding attendees claim, you did not cry at John’s Last Wedding. They are stupid and mistaken. Do not listen to them.

John looks so happy that night, as does everyone, so you try to leave the wedding early again.

John notices you this time, he stops you before you’ve gotten too far away, drags you by collar to the washroom, and the two of you do things there, _things_.

Then John says, _husband, you mad, insane git, you are not leaving your own wedding early, you_

_crazy, crazy love of my life. Oh my god, what have I done now, I’ve gone and married someone more insane than the first one._

_No return policy,_ you admonish.

He laughs for about 5 minutes, you join in, then he looks at you, with that shine in his eyes, and says, _love, we are going back in there and we are going to dance all night, you and me._

 

* * *

 

John says he will castrate you if you tell anyone about what happened during your subsequent sex holiday, and you do want to retain that particular segment of your anatomy, John does such spectacular things with it, so you will leave it at that. You will say the frequency was copious, as was the myriad of venues and the methods. John was surprisingly inventive.

John tells you you shouldn’t delete the bad things because it makes you less human. John says now you are his he maintains possession and claims ownership of every part of you, even the Not so Good parts, even the painful parts you went through. John says you should also stop pretending to be a sociopath because the two of you could’ve removed so many years of misunderstandings. John says he’s sorry he thought you were a sociopath, even wanted you to be one for a while (and says it is also your fault because you wanted him to believe you were, at times and led him down that path and you tell you did, in the past, want to be, because it was better that way. He looks at you like he understands and it makes him sad, and you don’t enjoy him being sad, so you kiss him.). John says you should just live with the sentiment and not banish all of it, that it will be alright because he’s here now and just like the extra information you have no room in your mind which he holds for you, if your sentimens overflow he will hold it for you too, as long as you will have him around.

You agree because it is the small things now, the smallest things, like doing experiments while John is watching telly or sitting across the table having breakfast and tea and reading the papers together in the mornings, or John walking over to you after you’ve played a piece on the violin for him and pressing a kiss on you, or not having to ask or having to say _it could be dangerous_ and know John will always follow you to crime scenes and have your back. Or how any time you want him to have you you can just go over and ask him if he’ll have you and he’ll say _oh god, yes_ or _tonight love, patience, I want to take you apart slowly_ or _damnit Sherlock don’t think you can get out of it just by offering sex_ , followed closely and mutinously by _just because I’m having sex with you now doesn’t mean you’re off the hook_. And you cannot begun to comprehend, the minutely small, and enormously large thing, of how every morning John is present and existing in your bed. And to this day John has not left, and John says he will not leave.

These are small, tiny things, as small as John pressing fingers to yours as he hands you your tea, as small as a secret smile just for you, as small as his whispered _you will_ _never fail to be brilliant and amazing,_ as small as _love I will kill you if you get yourself killed_ that slipped out unwittingly, as small as being bored together and finding ways out of the boredom in each other and with each other. But there were times you did not have these things, there were times they were denied to you. So you keep all your memories, even the terrible ones, because they remind you once, you lost these things, and once upon a time, you did not have these small, tiny, things.

And now you do.

 


End file.
